


this human heart built with this human flaw

by rowdyhomo



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anathema-centric, Character Study, Cryptid Hunting, Do It With Style Mini Bang (Good Omens), Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Self-Discovery, Trying Hobbies Like Fashionista's Try On Clothes, brief appearance by Newt, multitude of background ocs and family ocs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25399834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowdyhomo/pseuds/rowdyhomo
Summary: all anathema has ever been and ever will be is what a dead woman tells her she should be--until she burns the second book.(a story about freedom, choice, and finding yourself)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13
Collections: Apple-bottom Jorts, Good Omens Mini Bang





	this human heart built with this human flaw

**Author's Note:**

> my partner's work for the bang will be a podfic, which should be coming up in a few days! be sure to check it out when it does! they were lovely and v sweet to me and helped me w a funk even though it probably didn't feel that way to them :') i'll be sure to link too once its up!
> 
> for now Check em our at MagpieWords

_ Do you want to be a descendant all your life?  _

Newt asks her this as her hands hover, hesitate, along a perfectly preserved book. Over leather covers and cream pages bequeathed to ‘ _ Mrs. and Mr. Pulsifer _ ’. He asks her like what Anathema wants  _ matters _ . Asks her like she hasn’t spent twenty-three years doing everything  _ but _ what she wants. Like she’s ever wanted anything except to follow her ancestor’s prophecies. 

She has. Sometimes. It’s not something she’ll admit to, but she’s had weakness here and there in between the silences and the loneliness. During the nights where she is alone and far from home just because an old, old book tells her to be.  Nights where she refuses to swallow dissidence unspoken but instead whispers it quietly to herself beneath a blanket, like the spaces between stars have ears. 

It’s just not something she’s allowed herself to think on for more than those brief, brief moments of weakness before repressing it down, down, down into a small point of nothing before she can think too hard.

Hurt too much.

Newt asks her like it’s a  _ choice _ .

But being a descendant hasn’t ever been a choice. Not for Agnes’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter’s daughter, so on and so forth. Not for Anathema. Locked into the chains of predestined pathways the moment Agnes put pen to paper.

_ And ye shalle be theyr also, Anathema _

The sky is blue, grass is green, and Anathema, professional descendant of Agnes Nutter, shalle be theyr also.

Factual.

Inescapable.

Yet, Newt asks her. Asks her as Anathema holds her future in her hands. A future yet unknown except by the long dead woman who penned them. A future yet unread, knowledge yet unknown, fate yet undecided. A future that her bloodline demands she should read, should know, no, that she  _ must. _

And yet.

And  _ yet— _

Anathema also holds  _ a choice _ in her hands.

Fate yet  _ undecided. _

A choice given to  _ her _ , not the world which would beg the greater good on the price of her blood. A  _ choice _ given to her by the woman who’d single-handedly denied generations their agency and freedom. A choice  _ given _ to her in life that now in death could not be  _ taken _ again.

Read or don’t read. Know or don’t know.

And only Anathema is here to decide.

To choose.

Anathema’s fingers tremble against the manuscript as her breath trembles in her chest.

How long has she waited for something like this? For someone to look at  _ her,  _ to ask  _ her _ , to think not of prophecy and duty but of her? Her wants, her needs,  _ her _ .

There’s this image she has carried in her mind since she has been old enough to know  _ family _ ran synonymous to  _ cage _ . Of a woman with parts of her face, maybe the curve of her nose or the tilt of her brow, empty of all the love it should have. A smile slanted cruelly as she washed her hands and passed burdens onto others yet unborn. 

Only now does love long past paint eyes Anathema once thought cold. Only now does Anathema imagine regret tinging the pull of her ancestor’s mouth. Agnes did not make her choice lightly, Anathema realizes, but she  _ had _ made it.

And now the same choice sits before her penned delicately onto oil thick pages.

_ Do you want to be a descendant all your life? _

Quietly, but firm, her heart of heart roars with the volume of a mouse and the ferocity of a hurricane _—_ _ no _ .

Anathema puts the ancient pages to the flames and wonders.

If she is no longer a descendant, will never  _ be  _ a descendant again, is she even  _ Anathema _ , anymore?

Newt’s hand squeezes her knee as she continues to feed the fire. She watches the pages curl and blacken like every certainty she’s ever held. Inhales the smoke of destiny rejected and exhales the weighted chains of past, present, future.

Maybe she is no longer Anathema-the-Descendant. Maybe she was never really that woman to begin with. Not truly. But here and now, with the choice to sever now made, she thinks she would like to find out.

  
  
  


It starts with goodbye. 

Newt is kind and gentle and twice as awkward as any duckling and Anathema thinks she can learn to love him. Like her mother learned to love her husband and her grandmother hers.

There’s a kindred spirit in him reflecting the one in herself. A spirit which has always chafed under what the world has claimed they  _ should _ be. Who has felt lost and drifting but stumbled on anyway, searching and clawing for a place to fit as they  _ want  _ to be, not as they  _ should _ .

It would be easy to learn how to fit herself to him. To learn how to build affection from the ashes of predestination and breed true love from habit. To learn to be Mrs. Pulsifer with genuine care. 

Mr. and Mrs. Pulsifer, she wonders, tasting the idea and finding it bitter. It took her years to get that title: Dr. Device. Years of work and tears around circumstances less than ideal, and she finds herself no more willing to give that up than she is to carve out her own eye. It would be a choice, to decide to make a bed and lie with Newt for the rest of her life. Just as Agnes said she should. But it would be a choice that left her devoid of half of herself. Left with something complicated and squirming to fester and burn in her gut, always a hair shade not right _—_ bitter.

That’s not a love Anathema wants. Even if she could learn to be happy, more than happy she wants to learn to be  _ whole _ . To be an entire person all on her own. She can’t do that with Newt, not now. Maybe not ever, with the broken foundation of destiny chosen by a woman long-dead as their starting point.

So, Anathema says goodbye. 

She exchanges her own number for his mother’s—Newt’s own changes nearly every other week due to his unfortunate habit of electronic destruction—just in case. 

She doesn’t know yet at that moment, whether she will call him up in some time ahead and love him. Or whether in the future the number will be shut up, forgotten in a drawer. But she knows when the moment, if it comes, will be hers and hers alone. Not Agnes’s. The thought of which makes her so giddy she misses the bittersweet disappointment in Newt’s eyes as he kisses her cheek a final time.

The door closes after him and Anathema is alone in the quaint little cottage she hadn’t really wanted to move to but nonetheless found she adored. The serene natural surroundings left so many paths for witchery _—_ strong ley lines and an abundance of herbs _—_ and the quiet isolation of it far from anything remotely American gave her the freedom of ordering as many magazines as she liked without rebuke or guilt of wasting her time.

For a moment, she wonders if she could find herself here _—_ she thinks she might, trailing fingers over kitschy furniture that’s not her own. 

It only takes a moment more, a slow walk through the cottage to know she won’t. This place is not a home but the bones of prophecy. Here, Newt’s impressions, there the Them’s, and strewn everywhere her hours of work to find the Antichrist and save the world. Memories of which physical components could be removed but the emotional taste of which would linger long after.

Anathema takes a breath then starts to unpin her work from the kitchen wall.

Her family is waiting for her anyway.

She gathers her things: the witch’s tools her father will sigh fondly over, the magazines her mother will sigh disapprovingly about. She files her vast expanse of notes into size-coded envelopes, into color-coded folders, into neatly-labelled file boxes. All with the terrifyingly precise organization of a woman who actually achieved her doctorate on time. There hadn’t been any time not to, admittedly, but on time nonetheless. What little personal items and furniture she did bring are packed into a mishmash of cardboard boxes gathered from recycling stacks and the singular grocery store dumpster.

Finally, she gathers up scattered index cards. The remnants of Agnes’s first book.

There are marks across each of them now. Stains from being caught underfoot and purposefully ignored, left to the floor until this moment like the detritus she felt they were. Newer shoe mark scuffs and dirt smudges against older ones and olden writing from lives and ancestors past. 

Anathema traces her fingers over the handwriting of family long past and family distant but still living as she slowly gathers them into order. 

She has half the thought to burn them, too. To sprint the whole nine yards of spitting in the face of predestination, but she wavers and ultimately decides not to. Her small and aching heart still bruising for the approval and comfort of family.

Safe, the cards return to their little handcrafted wooden box, which Anathema buries under everything else in her carry on suitcase.

There’s time yet, she decides, to change her mind about them.

  
  


When she arrives hale and whole, her mother and father pull her into a tight if embarrassingly affectionate hug. Her mother murmurs soft prayers of thanks into her hair while her father rushes through praise like it might be the last thing he’ll ever say. 

Anathema allows herself to burrow into the comfort of her family's embrace, undoubtedly smashing her glasses into her mother’s breastbone, and holds them just as tightly. She can’t force any words past her throat, choked up with heavy-setting realization that it was done. That it is actually,  _ finally  _ over. The world saved and her family safe.

She breathes in the scent of herbs from her mother and books from her father and pointedly doesn’t think of what she’s done and how they might react. Lets them fuss over her on the drive home, her mother’s hands fluttering about her, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear, wiping an imaginary smudge, picking her immaculate outfit just a hair back into place, while her father chats long about the dinner they’ll have and how he can’t wait to hear what happened.

Anathema stops herself from squirming, but only just, before quietly noting that she doesn’t  _ really  _ remember too much of what happened (she does). That it’s all a rather fuzzy blur (it isn’t). More like a footnote in a history book than any memory (she still tastes the bone deep dread and fear when she realizes the world is ending and it's ending  _ right in front of he _ r).

Her mother clucks and her father sighs in disappointment but neither of them blame her. After all, despite knowing the world was ending an ocean away, they don’t much remember the strangeness that permeated the days before either.

“Nonetheless,” her mother soothes, slipping a hand into hers and squeezing delicately. “We are so very proud of you, dearest one, you followed your destiny with your head held high and that’s all we can ever ask for.”

Her mother’s voice is as warm and true as her aura, not a lie to be found. Her mother truly is proud of Anathema.

Anathema nods, smile not quite twitching at the corner of her lips. She squeezes her mother’s hand back and tries not to look like a lost child clinging to a lifeline. Her mother's pride only makes Anathema feel more out of place. Her own growing bitterness with the thought of predestination feels off. Wrong and too opposing. Like a drop of blood in a glass of milk. 

(Perhaps, it’d never grown. Maybe it has always been a tidal wave waiting to swallow her. Held back by her sheer disbelief in it. Only now freed as she turns her face toward it, looks at it with eyes wide open.)

She won’t tell them, she decides. They will know they are free and that will be enough. There’s no reason for them to know it was Anathema who’s done it. At least not yet, when her heart sits so fragile in her chest. Hollowed out by duty and choice and the conflict between them like bird bones. Light and ready to snap.

But she thinks of lying to them their whole life, thinks of questions she can’t avoid forever, and that decidedly feels worse than the knife of apprehension.

She will tell them...someday. Perhaps after they’ve adjusted. Just...not now. 

There is still time yet.

  
  
  


Time, it turns out, that Anathema is very unused to having.

Before, everything was so restricted _—_ plotted out and hung under the world’s apocalyptic deadline to meet maximum efficiency. Over the years Anathema had gotten very good at planning her life _—_ she only had twenty two years to do it after all. Not a single second could be wasted. 

Now she finds herself on the opposite end, sliding off the continental shelf into a deep sea of aimless free time. The future now spreads open before her, full of plenty of spare seconds, minutes, hours, for her to waste or use as she saw fit. But with very little for her to actually do in them.

Moving back and settling into her old bedroom takes up a few days, at least.

First, she is kept busy reorganizing everything her mother tries to arrange according to the best practices of feng shui. Then later with finding a space and place for every single congratulatory plant sent to her from the family among her own multitude of belongings. She also finds herself hiding her newly budding collection of magazines in more and more curious places just to keep her mother from tossing them out until eventually her father puts a stop to it. Then later struggles to sidestep _him_ as he tries to push for more destiny inclined conversations than she is comfortable with.

Eventually, though, every item had its place and every place its item. She even manages to barter a truce with her mother over the magazines by up-taking the rather arduous task of weeding the garden, and to barter peace from her father by throwing him a line to a particularly theological discussion inclined angel. A couple of weeks in and the three of them settled into a routine.

A routine with far too many blank spaces.

Anathema sighs, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The fabric of the gardening glove is rough against her skin, trailing crumbs of dirt down her face. She sputters then huffs, shaking her hands free to wipe her face as clean as it will get while she's down on her knees rummaging for weeds. After this, she could do some light rereading, or maybe some meditation after a bubble bath to rid herself of the grime.

Though truth be told, Anathema is rather sick of retreading words long since emblazoned in her mind and sitting in still silence and acting like it’s somehow different from her day to day monotony of waif-ing around while avoiding any serious discussions about the future with her parents.

_ Dear Mother Nature _ , she thinks, shoving her gloves back on and getting back at it with the trowel.  _ If only I could have a hobby. _

She tears up a particularly steadfast monstrosity with roots dug deep then pauses.

Why...couldn’t she have a hobby?

Before, it would’ve been frowned upon, looked upon as a silly waste of time if it weren’t already dictated as her calling. And, really, there hadn’t been much time for a hobby at all. Accelerating her education to get that doctorate before the age of twenty-five had been time-consuming enough without her obligations as a Descendant chewing up everything else.

But now,  _ now _ , with all the freedom and choice before her...surely she could indulge. Just a little. The question is: indulge in  _ what?  _ She didn’t really know what she liked, let alone what she disliked. Never had the chance to find out.

A childish surge of glee swept through her, and Anathema couldn’t help the impish giggle she released. 

Well, she certainly had time and choice to spare now, didn’t she, so why not just try them all? 

Reinvigorated, she begins to dig more enthusiastically, the large garden and its impressive overgrowth under the California summer sun no longer quite so daunting as before.

  
  
  


The first thing she tries to dip her toes into are crafts. 

They’re useful skills after all, or so she argues to her mother, which at least gets her to stop nagging about it but doesn’t stop the disapproving furrow between her brows. After all, why waste her time on something when there’s no certainty as to whether she’s  _ supposed  _ to do it?

Anathema understands the logic of it, having grown up in it her whole life. But now she finds she can no longer stomach it. So she avoids the topic whenever possible, tiptoeing around her mother, keeping her crafts out of sight and out of mind. 

It’s easy enough to do, at first.

Pottery takes her to a local studio, where she finds as much as she enjoys the feel of wet earth between her fingers, she rather lacks the ability to judge the pressure of her hands. She often ends up with jugs with thinning middles, or too squat bowls, or containers of ambiguous use. She paints and glazes them nonetheless, before leaving them behind to be tossed or stored or whatever the teacher decides for them. They aren’t functional, after all. No need to bring them home and flaunt her blossoming disregard for talent and destiny.

Her mother sighs anyway, brow never a centimeter away from her barely masked expression of disapproval, when she catches sight of clay caked under Anathema’s nails despite her best efforts. Clucks when she goes to grasp her daughter’s hands and finds them filmy and dry, flaking in places. Her mother never asks outright, but Anathema burns anyway. Tugging her hands and hiding them like frightful secrets in the safety of her dress pockets. 

She keeps her chin high, a Device woman through and through, but neither does she offer explanations that her mother won’t want to hear.

Weaving comes next, but Anathema can only take so many times of smashing her fingers or impossibly tangling her hair in the loom before she gives up, one rug richer that she surreptitiously hides in her closet.

She moves onto cooking, which means binge eating her creations more often than not to avoid having to pawn them off on family and hoping no one mentions it. She’s actually half-decent at it, so at least actually eating it isn’t a chore, but it's not  _ her  _ thing. Doesn’t light a fire of passion in her beyond simple pride in a job well done.

Baking is a whole other beast she’d rather never relive, if she’s perfectly honest.

Woodworking gets her a couple of birdhouses she stashes incognito as possible around the massive garden and as many splinters as she has hairs. Metalsmithing brings her so much molten slag and a rather impressive collection of rings with gems to match her mood or her rituals aplenty. She hides the latter in her jewelry box and wears the rest, taking the comments on their sudden appearance in stride and playing them off as an impulse purchase. 

Knitting goes much better than weaving, even if Anathema always gets the perls too tight in some places and too loose in others. It’s fun, and she manages to make a rather cozy blanket for settling into the nook in the bay window for a good long read.

Somewhere between learning card tricks and book binding, Anathema stumbles upon an old polaroid camera kept in a trunk with family photo albums dating back centuries all the way to black and white stills. It’s mere whim that has her plucking it from its resting place, rubbing a thumb fondly over the chicken scratch initials on its underside before tucking in into her large satchel.

It’s quickly apparent she doesn’t have the patience for the staging it takes to fake fantastical realism _—_ so she decides to simply snap photos of whatever catches her fancy. From nature walks to the intriguing way her mother holds her hands when distracted, from her father’s books stacked into leaning towers of terror to abandoned toys left on the sides of the road. She fills up several rolls of film before realizing, ah, yes, she would need to get those developed somehow wouldn’t she.

(Her father makes mention of a local college her family has funded for years at dinner one night. An arts college full of any and every kind of craftsmanship you could think of. The same one Anathema has been avoiding on the off chance people will talk and she’ll have been forced to break her silence. She half listens, poking at the collared greens on her plate, when he mentions a dark room that’s been recently installed.

When Anathema blinks up at him, he’s looking at her mother, conversation smoothly moving on to some romantic endeavor or another. 

It’s an offering, perhaps. Not acceptance, maybe, but allowance nonetheless.)

She hems and haws, then visits in the early hours of morning. It takes a bit more poking around and suspicious lingering once she finds the appropriate room than she’d like _—_ but eventually a frazzled looking undergrad takes pity on her. Poking wild strands of escape artist hair back into their bun, they walk her through the process, joy etched into every line and sound of their voice despite their harried appearance. It’s so clearly their passion that Anathema can’t help but feel her own excitement mount as the photos develop.

(This is what she wants, something that she can be passionate about, something to make her glow with joy to do and share with others.

She can’t wait to find it.)

Most of the photos don’t turn out, lighting off, flash obscuring, or focus too blurry for even Anathema to remember what she had been trying to capture. The undergrad’s face pinches in that particular way that means someone has nothing nice to say but can’t bring themselves to admit the truth either. Anathema only laughs.

There’s still so much more to try.

Anathema tries her hand at impressionistic painting, poems by typewriter, and soapmaking. She learns about electrical engineering with a faint twinge of fondness and even gives computers a good old go. It’s fun, creating and making and learning, but it doesn’t scratch the itch she sometimes gets to just  _ go _ .

She goes skydiving the next day and snorkeling the day after that. Signs herself up for a marathon she’ll later forget about then takes a trip to go ziplining the week after. One day she goes to a tourist attraction to fake a hand at mining then the next she takes a cave exploration tour. Sometimes she gets a whim and goes cliff jumping for the day and sometimes she plans a couple weeks long trip to a ski resort.

In between it all she finds herself dyeing her hair, piercing her nose, and buying an ungodly amount of clothing to try out this style and that. She ends up dying her hair back to brown, then chopping it into a bob around her shoulders, keeping the piercing and donating most of the clothing. It turns out she’s perfectly happy with her current vintage grandma goth aesthetic, though she did enjoy trying the pastels and lace of lolita fashion.

All throughout this, her room and the house at large start to gain little knick-knacks, trophies and reminders from things she done, detritus from her wild search for fulfillment. 

A burn mark in the kitchen cabinetry, self-portraits of her and her family hung in the halls, frozen leftovers in the freezer, her vast hoard of scarves somehow find themselves migrating to any and every closet, while the garage fills up with sporting equipment of all kinds. Her shelves fill up with guide books and DIYs to the point she has to sneak some onto the shelving downstairs and in her father’s study, hidden among thick tomes on the practice of religions and family photo albums. Like a child decorating the fridge, she pins multitudes of photos and half-finished artwork to her walls.

Occasionally, her mother will catch her eyes as she is coming or going and Anathema will see her face pinch in that delicate way it does when her mother wants to say something but doesn’t. The two of them play the dance long familiar to any family in which there is a difference in opinion, where both sides know the other won’t change. 

Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t bring it up and you won’t get an answer you don’t like.

(Sometimes, when Anathema is curled up in her reading nook at night her mother will come to join her. She will take her hands inexorably, if gently, and pick at the dirt under cracked nails. Nails she always files if not clips before buffing to perfection. Sometimes she applies a clear coat of polish, not a drop out of place or smudge to be found. Always she ends these little sessions with soothing lotion rubbed into parched skin, finger pads working relief into new nicks and hurts.

It almost feels like an apology.)

The two of them keep it up, while her father distinctly keeps out of it, even as the silence between them becomes gravid with all the things they refuse to name.

And there’s plenty there beyond just Anathema’s new habit of fluttering this way and that.

  
  


These past few months have been something strange. She’s watched her family, usually so certain and full of faith, drift and flounder like jellyfish with no current. Watched the discussions taking place over telephone and video conferences in between trips and read long chains of letters and emails before bed after a long day of crafts. For all she’s been guiltily avoiding participating in the discussion herself, she's not ignorant of the general consensus running about her family's conversations.

Which is thus: the Nutter descendants are lost. 

Cut adrift from a life line they’ve clung to for generations; they’re loose-footed without the stage directions of prophecy. Unsure of the wide array of choices that lay before them now. Choices which they no longer have the certainty of knowing are the Right ones. It makes them frightened. It makes them angry. It makes them bite into each other with angry words like rats in a cage one moment, and flock together tearfully the next.

And it’s all Anathema’s fault.

All due to her choice _—_ a choice she made for all of them without consideration or consent.

Just like Agnes had.

It makes her sick, for all she is so certain that her choice was the right one _—_ she made the choice for freedom after all _—_ the slowly dawning realization that she’s inflicted her own kind of predestination onto her family is a heavy one to bear. In giving them freedom, she’s taken their very basic right to choose it.

Just like Agnes has done to her and all those before her.

When her mother takes her aside one night and tells her the family will be having a get-together during the fall equinox, Anathema tells her mother none of this.  Instead, she keeps her words and confessions locked up tight under her throat just as she has for the past months. Merely nods in agreement to her mother’s grim announcement that the Nutter descendants would be gathering to come to some sort of comfort or consensus on how they should be moving forward, with their paths now obscured. 

Her mom takes her silence as determination to be brave in the face of fear and uncertainty and hugs her tightly with soft assurances that they will figure this out. That they will, as always, find a way.

It’s not entirely wrong. Anathema _ is  _ trying to be brave in the face of uncertainty. To be steadfast in her decision, already made and unchangeable, with the now mounting evidence that no-one else may agree she’s done the Right thing or even the right thing.

Anathema says none of this. Simply selfishly accepts her mother’s comfort, and silently dreads the coming fall equinox for the first time in her entire life.

  
  
  


Two weeks is both far too much time and not enough. Anathema spends a large portion of it worrying and drifting among the halls of her childhood home without purpose. She tries to continue where she left off, to continue knitting her horribly misshapen socks, or writing on her conspiracy forum on the merits of mole people, or finding her newest adrenaline rush in the form of extreme sports she has no experience in and half as much skill.

But she  _ can’t _ . 

It feels wrong, somehow, to continue on like that, carefree and full to the brim with euphoria when she knows, hears or reads every day in the newest family chain mail or group call, that everyone else is all but collapsing in despair under the same wide sky of freedom and choice.

Instead, she wrings her hands in silence, performs quiet calming rituals and blessings for safe travels and good luck, and chokes on the size of everything she wants to confess. A lump lodged in her lungs that grows with every tearful cry for answers and every directionless angry shout. She falls to old habits, scouring through the indexed card box of Agnes’s old prophecies, performing her own readings and divination, in an attempt to discern whether her choice was truly the right one.

It has to be. She can’t believe that continuing to live on handed down stage instructions would be the good and right choice. No, she refuses to believe that her destiny can only be set in stone, that she can only dance along to the notes of prophecy like a puppet with no soul. Not when freedom tastes so wild and true. Not when she’s spent all her years bitter and hating under a thin veneer of acceptance and thicker cover of lying to herself that she’d never want anything else.

But still, she doubts, guilt eating at her resolve like rot in the heart of a tree.

Anathema does tea readings, and tarot readings. Throws bones into the fire and ashes into the water, begging for a sign that she isn’t wrong for wanting this. Isn’t wrong for choosing to live free even at the cost of her family’s desires.

All her divinations deign to tell her is that change is coming, that there will be hard decisions, and to choose her words carefully. The stars whisper much the same when she attempts to chart answers from their distant long dead lights.

If she’s a little huffy after that, well, that’s between her and the unfeeling ocean waves she screams her frustrations out to.

Oddly enough, however, the results are more comforting than if she’d been given a definite answer. Sure, there’s no certainty, wouldn’t ever be any certainty since she burned the book, but it's hers. Her choice, her consequences, and if Anathema is anything it certainly isn’t a coward who runs from her consequences. She’s fully capable of lying in the graves she’s dug like the grown woman she is.

It doesn’t take away the sickly guilt souring her gut, this resolution, but it does make the weight of her family’s pain easier to hold in the spaces between her ribs.

  
  
  


Timely people to a fault, the Nutter Descendants _—_ Devices, Gonzales, Boyles, Starrs _—_ arrive at her parents’ Malibu home the night before the equinox. The large home, usually so warm despite its wide and vast empty spaces, fills to the brim with anxiety. Underneath the effort to make this like any other family gathering, small talk between adults, comfort foods provided according to every diet restriction or preference, the play of children underfoot, uneasiness chokes any easy-going joviality before it can arise.

Kids participate in oddly quiet games of imagination under the hesitant, sometimes tearful murmuring of the adults young and old present. Eyes jump around shiftily, as if the darkness itself outside the well-lit home waits offscreen to pounce should they show too much strain.

It’s absolutely suffocating.  Every badly concealed worry twists into Anathema’s heart, where even an overeager butcher and a knife could not reach. Every shed tear dumps another shovel of dirt into her six-foot deep hole, burying her from toe to chin, suffocating her. Still, she holds her chin level and hands steady, her voice warm and empathetic. Accepts the hurt like the weight of a feather against her heart, even if every discolored aura strikes like a personal failure.

Searching for her own relief, Anathema does her best to lessen the heaviness draping across shoulders like the world-eating ouroboros itself. She gives nieces and nephews too many sweets and some of her older cousins magazines on cryptids and aliens to occupy themselves with something bigger than what inflates the room. She gives younger aunts and uncles commiserating glances and affirming hugs and endures far too much quiet muffled crying into her shoulder behind hidden corners from the older ones.

The night passes quietly, unremarked, family units bedding down in the comfort of each other’s presence. Dawn comes almost too slowly, rays stretching out languidly to tug everyone up, drawing them together as it alights on the face of their true struggle. Bellies filled with breakfast, the Nutter family arranges a chair for every person from the youngest child to the oldest around a circle of empty floor space. As with any other congregation, everyone will have a chance to make their voice heard. Whether that be in the spotlight of the crowd's gaze or from within its comforting mass.  


Everyone but herself, Anathema decides, as she sits stoically silent. Her own voice has already had its moment, when she argued with Newt over the burning of the book with no consideration for anyone else. It has no right to this space here, in the aftermath for those who'd been unable to weigh in when it counted.

(Or maybe she really is just a coward. Willing to hold onto the knife of consequences but unwilling to bleed under the blame _—_ safe in the knowledge she caused this and bears responsibility for her family’s suffering only as long as she doesn’t have to see rejection or accountability in the others’ eyes.)

The debate begins, as expected, in a disorganized chorus of voices. People calling out to each other or murmuring to those next to them with no care for structure or order. Aunts call out ideas for a group divination, Uncles demand a search for anything else Agnes Nutter could have left behind, Grandmothers and Grandfathers and Greats-Too-Many declare there is no point to the debate in the first place, if there is no direction in prophecy then surely they all should do nothing, Nephews wonder if they can make up their own prophecies, Nieces think perhaps they should appoint a new prophet, offer up a new soul to the universe's voice.  


“What are we supposed to _do—_ ”

“ _—_ surely she wouldn’t have just _abandoned_ us _—_ ”

“How do we know what’s safe now?”

“Will there be a new prophet?”

“I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“We should wait for something to come _—_ ”

“We can’t do _nothing—_ ”

“We did everything she asked of us and now nothing?”

“What kind of thanks _—_ ”

“She never really looked out for us _—_ ”

“This has to be a test.”

“There has to be _something—_ something we’re missing.”

_ Please let there be something _ , her family’s hearts cry as one. 

Anathema’s own  _ aches _ as the questions and outcries oscillate ever more rapidly between gut-wrenching despair and heart-stopping anger. Throughout it all the underlying message remains the same, as groups coalesce and spokespersons for each of them step up to argue their points: they've been abandoned. There’s nothing left for them. They’re ruined. 

They need to  _ fix  _ this.

Pressure builds up behind Anathema’s teeth, her jaw clenching hard against the words tumbling in her throat, begging for forgiveness, for understanding, for a confession she hasn’t made yet. The pressure continues to feed on itself, growing fat like a maggot on her guilt, until suddenly she finds herself standing, fists clenched, at the center of all the commotion without quite making the decision to do so. 

Around her murmuring and debates continue, low enough for her to say her piece over it, before slowly petering out like the final flames in a pile of ash as she remains silent. The silence consumes the room as her family awaits what she has to say and she, in turn, waits for the words to right themselves into something more than crying.

Eventually, she breathes in, breathes deep like coming up for air, centers herself, lifts her chin. Begins to speak.

“I have a confession to make,” Anathema starts, voice steady in a way her heart isn’t. People scoff and roll eyes at the start, others look on with curiosity, but no one speaks. “Agnes wrote another book of prophecies.”

Ringing quiet reigns for the smallest increment of time before everyone begins shouting all at once. 

“Oh, thank god _—_ ” Relief.

“What do you mean there’s  _ another _ _—_ ” Confusion.

“Anathema Device, if this is a lie _—_ ” Disbelief.

But most of them say the same thing, “ _ Why did you keep this from us _ ?” Accusation.

How dare she keep this from them, how dare she allow her family to panic and flounder. Did she enjoy it? Watching them scramble and cry and rage? How dare she, how dare she, how dare she _—_

Before the cacophony grows unmanageable, Anathema’s mother demands silence in a voice that could quiet hurricanes. Aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, fall silent, grandmothers, grandfathers and greats fall into bitter murmuring on the disrespect of the young.

Her mother moves to stand next to Anathema, a comforting hand encircling her wrist. The soft touche itches along Anathema's spine like damnation.  


“Quiet, quiet, everyone, I am certain my dearest had a reason for this, she has always done her best for our family, has she not? She has given her all to following and deciphering Agnes’s wisdom just as we all have. Let her speak, let her explain,” finishes her mother, turning dark hopeful eyes in her direction.

Anathema feels her mother tremble in the hold on her wrist. Uncertainty hidden beneath composure like a riptide. She imagines, too, that she can feel her mother’s rapid heartbeat fluttering against the pulse of her wrist. The beat of hope against her fear.  


It takes everything in Anathema to force her next words out in the softest whisper, “I burned it.”

Quiet so thick not even the gods would dare disturb it.

“Agnes wrote another book. It got it while I was still in Tadfield,” Anathema starts the words falling heavily from her mouth. Does her mother's heart stop? Freeze and grow frigid like the look in her mother's eye? Anathema imagines it must. “I had it in my hands and I _—_ I realized something. That I _—_ that _all_ of us _—_ could have a choice. We could have _freedom._ ”

Anathema pauses, the silence echoing so loudly in her ears. She swallows, turning her gaze to her mother’s, begging for understanding.

“I realized also that I didn’t want to be....no, I had never _wanted_ to be Agnes Nutter’s descendant. And that if I read that book...if I read that book I wouldn’t be able to stop being that. I would be trapped again, trapped for however long, and that everyone after me would too."

She swallows, tries to breath. The truth is supposed to set you free, isn't it? So why does she feel so _heavy_. Lead in her tongue, iron in her blood, stone in her gut. She doesn't stop.

"But I could stop it, I could end it before it began, I could _—_ I could free _all of us_ from that. So, I-I burned it. There are no more.”

A beat.

Anathema's eyes slide across the room, gaze slipping like oil over water. Not a single person meets her gaze, except her mother. Her eyes usually so warm, reflect nothing back at her, as impenetrable as a titanium safe. There is neither acceptance or forgiveness there. Just cold finality _—_ the sound of a deadbolt sliding home forever.

“I’m sorry,” Anathema rasps, raw like an exposed nerve.  


But the words sound like the condemning gavel when she doesn’t regret the choice at all.

Around her, the room erupts into vitriol. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] this human heart built with this human flaw](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518547) by [MagpieWords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieWords/pseuds/MagpieWords)




End file.
